Mayor to present veteran board appointments, amid harsh criticism

Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce today a new set of appointees to the Veteran Advisory Board, finally replacing many of the members whose terms had expired.

The appointments have angered representatives of the city’s veterans, who say that de Blasio has failed to act quickly on a crisis.

Story Continued Below

The board, established in 1987, serves as a liaison between veterans and the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs and helps guide policy and connect the veterans to resources in the city. The mayor is responsible for appointing six members; the speaker and Council appoint five.

The mayor’s slow pace of appointments led to questions about whether the board was serving its purpose in the early months of his administration. Gotham Gazette reported last year on some of the holdover members’ murky attendance record at meetings and frustration among city veterans who did not feel they had a direct connection to the board.

Earlier this year, the City Council approved legislation to increase the number of members on the board from nine to 11 and require meetings to be streamed online, after advocates called for a renewed board and fresh start to the process.

The new mayoral appointees are Charles Greinsky, Todd Haskins, Samuel Innocent, Mariel Juarez, Jules Martin, and Anthony Odierno. City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito appointed Charles Hernández and re-appointed John Rowan and Patrick Devine.

All board members who were appointed by former mayor Michael Bloomberg have been removed, including Paul Rieckhoff, the founder and C.E.O. of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America—the country’s first organization specifically for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, which boasts over 200,000 members and is headquartered in the city.

Rieckhoff told Capital the members were only told about their removal a day in advance and said he questioned the qualifications of the new members. He also criticized Loree Sutton, commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, for her slow pace of action so far.

“It’s become clear to the community that the mayor is not serious about veterans' issues,” Rieckhoff told Capital. “He has shown no indication in terms of focus, resource, time, planning that this at all a priority for him. It took him almost nine months to name a veterans commissioner.”

At her appointment announcement, Sutton said she would conduct a 90-day assessment in the first day of her tenure to understand the needs of the agency and the community it serves.

“I will take that as a challenge,” Sutton said at the press conference in August last year.

Those 90 days have come and gone.

“After he named her, which we supported, we heard about this grand vision for a 90-day planning strategy on how we are going to support veterans, and we haven’t seen that yet,” Rieckhoff told Capital.

Specifically, Rieckhoff said the appointment process for the new members had not been transparent or inclusive of the city’s veteran community.

“There is no process," Rieckhoff said. "The mayor has not met with anyone."

Joe Bello, a veteran who founded the advocacy organization NY MetroVets, said that he, too, was unsatisfied by the city’s vetting process for the board’s new appointees.

“Yes, we wanted the board cleaned,” Bello said. “We wanted to clean house and get a fresh perspective, but it just seems like the process to go about doing that, nobody understood. There was no notice, no word, all of the sudden we have these appointees and they’re veterans but they are not active in the community per se.”

The administration is required by law to appoint people who have served in the armed forces. The new appointees include an NYPD veteran, a former member of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, a Goldman Sachs veterans' network chair, and a program manager of military and veterans affairs at JP Morgan, among others.

“If the mayor wants to show he is serious about veterans in the city, he’s gotta show it, and that happens with more than just a ceremonial advisory committee made up of folks who I’m sure are good people but they are not made up of the community,” Rieckhoff said.

In a statement, de Blasio touted the appointees’ diversity.

“This administration is committed to serving New York City's veteran community just as they selflessly served and protected our nation. Today's appointees share our administration's deep commitment to veterans, and I know this diverse group will provide a communicative and transparent link between the City's veteran community and the Mayor's Office of Veterans' Affairs," de Blasio said.

Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for de Blasio pointed out there are representatives from Veterans Service Organizations on the board and that the new appointees are “actively involved” in the community.

Klein also said Commissioner Sutton has spoken or met with over 100 organizations of the veteran’s community since her appointment.

Rieckhoff confirmed Sutton has spent time meeting with groups, but stressed the agency’s meager budget and limited resources threaten to reduce her influence.

“She’s got a very small budget and unless she gets the support of the mayor, it’s strictly ceremonial,” Rieckhoff said.